Excruciating
by Auditory Eden
Summary: It was the word that defined their relationship. Lupin and Dora, not totally without plot. Non-explicit sex.


Author: AuditoryEden

Rating: M  
Warnings: non-explicit sex, character death, etc.

Notes: This is the first thing I've written for HP in quite a while. I have recently become majorly hooked on Doctor Who, and also had vast quantities of summer homework to finish before term started on Monday last. This is Remus and Dora, inspired a bit by the latest chapter of "Sweet Downfalls" by Eva Quill.

Excruciating

It was never easy with him. Never easy at all; in fact, one might reasonable call it excruciatingly difficult.

Excruciating was actually a very good word to apply to their relationship. Every step, every word and every kiss was dragged forth with all the strength of their love for each other. The very moment that they first met as mutually sentient people she saw the pain in his eyes and it dragged at her very soul. He had seen her and remembered, painfully, a time when all the darkness in the world couldn't have touched her.

Their friendship was excruciatingly awkward at first. Tonks found herself falling hard for a man who was tremendously self-sacrificing, had a complex akin to severe body dismorphia, and whose number one superpower was occasional extreme hairiness. Lupin found himself entranced by a girl who'd once been terribly interested in drooling on him as much as possible, who was bright and lively and young and prickly. A girl he could never think to touch.

Then they'd moved past it as best they could, and fell into a comfortable sort of comradeship. He resolutely called her "Nymphadora" and she resolutely replied, "_Don't_ call me _Nymphadora_, Remus".

Then had come that horrible fight at the ministry. Sirius had died, and, god, if she hadn't been stupid enough to blurt it out right then and there, that she loved him.

It hurt so very much. Lupin had been shocked, sitting there, with her, in the library of Grimmauld Place, with a mug of tea held loosely in his hands. She had been sitting on the floor, knees drawn up, face tear-stained. He had swallowed lightly, and for a moment she allowed herself to think that this would end well. He placed the tea on the side table, and then sunk to his knees in front of her. There was a moment of quiet and stillness, then he'd done something she didn't expect; he placed a warm, large hand on the back of her neck, right at the base of her skull, and pulled her forward into an excruciatingly hot kiss.

It would be ridiculous for Tonks to even begin to try to claim that she had never wondered how kissing Remus would feel. It would be totally reasonable for her to claim that even her wildest dreams (and _that_ was saying something, her dreams about Remus being what they occasionally were) couldn't begin to measure up, and so were blown away.

His lips had been warm on hers, terribly warm, as though they were going to burn straight through to her soul and devour it, and she couldn't find it in herself to care, as long as he kept kissing her. She had loosened her grip on her knees, letting them fall away so she could draw herself closer to the amazingly sexy werewolf who was snogging her. As her arms wound round his shoulders, his spare hand laid on her back, between her shoulder blades, and stroked down, around her side and over her hip. She had hummed in appreciation, opening her mouth to his, and letting him ravage her with his tongue. Scooting closer to him, Tonks tilted her head, and kissed him back with untoward fervor. She was wrapped around him and he was wrapped around her and she felt like all might just be well as heat pooled in her stomach and she sighed into his kisses.

Then he was standing across the room looking pained, and she was siting, cold and alone, looking up at him with wide, terrified eyes. He had told her that he loved her; God, how much he loved her, then that he couldn't be with her. That he was too old and poor and dangerous. Then he had left her, cold and crying and alone, on the floor in the library.

And then had started the excruciating period of estrangement. Lupin had seemingly disappeared from her life, and she couldn't bring herself to seek him out. It was like having ice in her veins, ice that stilled her powers of transformation.

Ice that changed her patronus into the shape of a wolf.

She heard the things the adult order said, the quiet gossip about her and the handsome werewolf. She heard the story the young Hermione Granger had come up with to explain it. The idea that she could be in love with Sirius was almost laughable, but then, once upon a time she would have said the same for Remus.

Then the Battle of Hogwarts. Dumbledore dead at the bottom of the Lightening Struck Tower, and heartbreak, and Bill.

Bill had been a very good friend to her, very dear when they were at school. They were both aware of Molly's desire for them to fall in love and make lots of little Weasley-Tonks grandchildren, but neither had ever seen each other that way, except once through a haze of fire whiskey after a Quidditch match once, when he'd snuck her into the Gryffindor commons for the victory party against Slytherin. They'd spent the evening getting sloshed, and ended it by snogging in a closet, before she vomited and he cleaned her up and took her back to her own dormitory.

Now he was lying on a bed in the hospital wing, and Fleur, that girl that she'd never thought was good enough, proved to be just like herself; a woman in love with a man who was bitten. Later they would discover that there was no real cause for alarm, but just in that moment, Tonks loved her for loving him.

But her love for Remus had swamped that. She'd cried and stormed at him,and felt marginally satisfied as one by one, those around her took her side.

After the teachers and Hagrid and Harry had been spirited away by the new headmistress, Lupin had taken her hand and lead her to the door, through it, into the empty corridor.

As she stood, cold as stone and just as mobile, he told how much he loved her, how much it terrified him to think of losing her. How he didn't deserve her.

She told him that she loved him, how she didn't care that he was older, or poor, or even dangerous. How much it hurt her to be pushed away.

He'd kissed her again. This time it was a soft kiss, and she could taste his need and his fear. It was excruciatingly painful, the feeling of his guilt, of how horrid he thought he was for sullying her.

So she kissed him back, feeling like she was destroying him with every movement and every breath. This time, when he broke the kiss, he held her close and cried. She cried too, and instead of feeling cold she felt warm. Warm and loved, and it was excruciatingly good to feel that way after so long.

Then he had begun to laugh, and she had looked at him in confusion. Her hair, he pointed out, was pink again, and she laughed too.

They didn't return to the hospital wing that night. Instead they found a room at the inn, Tonks sending a brief patronus message up to the school, to Molly, to tell them that it was all right. Her patronus was still, she noted, a wolf.

Every night for a week they slept in each others arms, trying not to think about the events of the battle, waking from nightmares to a long-awaited lover's kiss.

The day of Dumbledore's funeral changed it all.

They had walked to the castle, hand in hand, dressed in black. Taken their seats near other Order members. She had cried her way through, Lupin holding her hand and letting her lean on him, soothing her as best he could. Afterward, as they lingered by the tomb, Tonks had spotted Harry and Ginny walking around the lake together. She knew what he was going to tell her, knew what he was going to say, and cried for her as well.

Then they'd returned to the village, to their room at the Broomsticks, and a hungry fervor had taken them over.

It was slow at first. His wide, warm hands sliding over her shoulders to push her robes to the floor, her hands slim and calloused, undoing his buttons. They stripped each other bare, and she counted his scars. With a kiss, they stumbled back onto the bed, and began their exploration.

His hands, she reflected dizzily, were an amazingly oxymoronic combination of tender and firm. Everywhere he touched her left her whimpering and begging for more. His lips, his skin, she couldn't begin to think how she'd survived without them for so very long. He was hesitant, but not clumsy; his delicate touch was like worship, and she felt like she was made of gold, shining on his fingertips.

She discovered, as the moments wore on, that he was a tremendously skilled lover, and an extremely attractive man besides. He shuddered as she touched him, a wicked grin in her eyes and dancing round her lips, and he retaliated in the most pleasurable way, sending her tumbling off into an abyss the likes of which she had never previously known.

When she had returned, after a long, glowing eternity of ecstasy, her orgasm prolonged as his fingers worked inside her, he was lying on his side, watching her with eyes like stars, amazed and shining with awe.

She'd kissed him, of course. What else was there for it? In moments she ready again, and, still kissing him, she'd pushed him onto his back and slid onto him. His hands slid up her legs to her hips, and he guided her as she moved over him. Their movements had grown more frenzied, and she gasped again and again as he moved inside her. Again, she went tumbling over the edge while he stayed behind, watching her, moving inside of her. She collapsed on top of him, and he flipped them over, laying her out beneath him without ever withdrawing from her body.

He kept moving from there, driving her towards climax again, hard and fast and as inexorable as death. Tonks could feel his hands on her, everywhere around her, and now she cried out as he surged between her legs, his lips at her ear, whispering and murmuring.

This time, as she felt it ripple through her, she brought him with her.

She shuddered and moaned her way through the orgasm, and felt him explode inside of her, just a second after she began. In the absolute clarity of that moment, he kissed again, and she felt totally safe and whole.

Afterward, they drifted into sleep, naked and total, and she listened to his heart beating with the steady thrum of excruciating love.

xXx

Parting Comments: This is...theoretically...supposed to be companion to "Not a Bad Looker", but I found that Remus and Dora had already sorted out their main differences by the funeral, so I had to move up the time line a bit.

Love you lots if you review, so please do, especially as this is the first sex scene I've published.

Hugs and Kisses,

Eden


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